Swedish-American, Stockholm-based siblings Sarah and Jacob Snavely have been together as Dag För Dag (“Day for Day” - the title of a language-learning tape ”“ in Swedish) since 2007. After much touring, and the release of their 6-track Shooting From The Shadows EP in 2008 (reviewed here) they are one of those bands that have slowly accrued recognition and acclaim as they’ve gone along. With the release now of this their debut full length album, they are well placed to consolidate and build on their already growing appeal.The main thing you notice on first and subsequent listens is the atmosphere of the album. Tambourines rattle, ghostly yowls fade in and out, Sarah’s vocal ”“ languorous, sometimes breathy, sometimes more strident ”“ haunts. The gothic vibe is most noticeable on the short title track intro, the Raveonettes-like ‘Hands And Knees’, ‘Boxed Up In Pine’ with its funereal subject matter (“scatter me like ashes” “I’ll be just fine / boxed up in pine”) and droning violins and the drawn-out wail towards the end of ‘Silence Is The Verb’: a genuinely spine-tingling moment.Elsewhere the mood turns to aggression. The sense of threat and menace is palpable on tracks like ‘Seven Stories’, the refrain “You won’t fly / You won’t sail / Till I set you free” spat out like a hex; or the “fury” that the recipient of ‘Light On Your Feet’ thought ”“ clearly incorrectly - “couldn’t last”; or again in ‘Traffic Jam’’s exclamation “How dare you”.Musically, however, the pace often belies the urgency of the lyrics and vocal. Many of the tracks (‘Boxed Up In Pine’, ‘Silence Is The Verb’, ‘The Leather Of Your Boots’) feel overlong, on what is already an overlong album: 13 tracks if you include the bonus ‘Ring me Elise’ (which originally featured on the band’s debut EP Shooting From The Shadows). The pace is often pedestrian/middling, sometimes successfully evoking a sexy loucheness ”“ as on ‘Wouldn’t You’, or the S&M glam-stomp ‘The Leather of Your Boots’ ”“ but often instead evoking a surely-unintended sense of languor and drowsiness.At their best, as on ‘Wouldn’t You’, the sombre atmospherics, music and lyrical content come together to produce something dramatic and resonant. ‘Come In Like A Knife’, too, impresses, with it’s ‘Stand By Me’ rhythm and bassline and more human, approachable feel. All too often, though, I found I was left with a sense of the intangibility of these songs. Neither quite hitting the mark in terms of out-and-out fear and rage nor drawing you further in with emotional content or warmth, the overriding feeling, on reaching the album’s end, was one of something close to indifference.

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